Israeli computer vision startup, Trigo Vision, has won $7 million in a seed funding round by UK-Israel based Hetz Ventures and Vertex Ventures Israel.
Trigo Vision’s vision platform is designed for the retail market. It combines a network of ceiling-based cameras with machine vision algorithms to identify customers' shopping items, similar in principle to the Amazon Go store in Seattle, which doesn’t have a checkout because it can track what customers put in their shopping basket.
The funding will be used to grow the company's core R&D team and build new applications for its technology.
‘The founding team has managed to assemble a world-class R&D team to tackle an enormous user experience problem in retail,’ commented Yanai Oron, general partner at Vertex Ventures. ‘The speed in which the company has put together a working product and early traction with large retailers is a testament to that.’
Developed by AI and algorithm experts, Trigo Vision's founders, Michael and Daniel Gabay, worked on projects for Israel's military intelligence. The company's computer vision technology uses significantly fewer cameras compared to other solutions on the market, according to Trigo Vision.
‘We have received tremendously positive feedback for Trigo Vision,’ commented Michael Gabay, co-founder and Trigo Vision's CEO. ‘We're already in talks with major grocers globally and we're confident that Trigo Vision will be the first platform to debut in a live retail store.’
Trigo Vision says its platform can help reduce shoplifting, provide intelligence for retailers on buying behaviour, and increase operational efficiency within stores.
Further reading
Stores turn vision analytics into sales – Retailers are using complex vision analytics to track shoppers, from entering a store to the point of purchase. RetailNext’s Mark Jamtgaard spoke at the Embedded Vision Summit about an embedded system for just such a purpose
Automating grocery shopping – Matthew Dale explores how online supermarket Ocado is using 3D vision to automate its warehouses
